


Gone

by willowbilly



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: 12 Days of Carnivale, Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, F/F, First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Racism, Insomnia, Light Angst, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Season/Series 01, all of which is very brief and/or vague, implied/referenced suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 13:19:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17264894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowbilly/pseuds/willowbilly
Summary: Silna lives with Sophia in England.





	Gone

**Author's Note:**

> For the 12 Days of Carnivale New Year's Day prompt "new beginnings."

“Come back to bed,” Sophia murmurs.

When Silna turns to her she can see Sophia's hand peeking out from her nest of blankets. It's a large bed, the bed of a different land; raised from the ground and with goose's down stuffed into the coverlets and pillows. Fabric instead of furs. A canopy atop it not unlike that which was draped over those two doomed ships to keep the worst of winter's exposure from the decks.

That was a different land's winter, too. Were its harshness to descend upon the autumn gardens which lie below the window through which Silna is looking, it would strip the last of the gaudy leaves and freeze everything down to ice and stone. All that lushness first gone to seed then gone to death. And grayer, yet, beneath the ash-soft moonlight.

Silna hums in noncommittal agreement to let Sophia know that she will return to the bed, but only after a bit. She is watching the clouds move across the clear, dark sky. It's windy, the towering trees buffeted until they flow and billow almost like algae near a wavy shore, and the clouds are black, ragged scraps of pale-limned shadows which are flushed and lit into ethereal silver as they scud swiftly across the flat disc of the moon. The moon is the same amber color as the whiskey drink which Crozier was for so long so intent on drowning himself in.

Silna does not like the taste of whiskey, nor is she fond of the way it dulls everything and sets it to spinning; disorienting the mind as much as bloodloss or deprivation or the _dreams_ would. Some things are meant to be sharp, Silna is sure, but Crozier must have had enough of sharpness whittling away at him. Especially after having returned to this England with only Silna in tow, for failure cuts deep indeed.

She had met Sophia shortly after Crozier and Silna had arrived. Together, as could not be helped on the Ross ship which had borne them from Silna's ancestral homeland, for the two of them had been so attached to each other when Crozier had been found that assumptions as to their relationship were made and shared quarters procured. They had slept back-to-back in the same bunk for the entirety of their journey across the ocean, chaste as children, and they had indeed drawn a measure of comfort from their closeness, though not a comfort of the sort which the others had thought that Silna was providing.

From Crozier, Silna learned to polish what English she had grown to understand from Goodsir, so that, while they made the most of their being joined at the hip for the time being, Silna would nevertheless be less dependent on him when they made berth. And upon making berth, and as soon as he'd made Silna's situation as an unmarried maiden alone in a new land known to Sophia Cracroft, he had left Silna in Cracroft's care. Driven away, Silna was to infer, by the blame of Sir John Franklin's widow.

But the widow was not petty enough to bother turning her ireful blame upon an odd, mute, and destitute woman, who was of a people whom the Lady considered inferior to her own. And Crozier trusted Sophia. Trusted her enough to beg Silna to trust her as well.

And so Silna had begun her life anew.

With Crozier, she had found herself plagued by doubt and regret. She could have stayed. Stayed and died alone, as she was meant to, but she'd known that Crozier would not have left without her. Not since he'd followed her when she had meant to slip away into the night. And she had wanted him to live.

She still wants him to live. As time goes on and she sees him more and more, again, she is pleased to see that he might finally have resigned himself to doing so.

It takes far longer for Silna to realize that she wants to live, too. It is Sophia who makes her realize this.

Sophia is an accommodating host. A strange host, as all these people are strange, but she is careful to give Silna both support and space. She helps Silna into the weird and weirdly revealing contraptions which pass for women's clothing whenever Silna decides to brave them over more comfortable garb, her own hands tightening laces and stays and matching her breath to Silna's in the predawn silence, and the rest of the time she makes no comment as to Silna going about the house in trousers except to compliment her.

It is a large house, and the one in the country, the one with the property and the privacy for Silna to go and roam out of doors in trousers, is larger yet. All immovable building materials and great, vaulting ceilings. All cold drafts and echoes and hard floors which creak underfoot.

Sophia's bed is more comfortable. Warm and soft, and with the draperies closed about it, there is not so much of a chilly breeze. With the drapes closed she can almost believe that she is _home._

They'd kissed for the first time in the gardens, in the summer.

Gardens were peculiar. Whole plots and tracts of cultivation wound through with crunchy paths of pea gravel, where the plants were arranged in the rich soil just so, and where the unwanted things were uprooted and thrown away. Where everything fit within a decorative border and there were hedges clipped into the shapes of animals and where flowers the likes of which Silna had never seen were encouraged to flourish.

The summer heat was so great that Silna took to wearing a straw hat at all times to hide her dark hair from the sun, and she let her shirt gape wide at the neck. She'd taken over one of the bushes and had been trimming and coaxing it into the shape of a bear standing on its hind legs, and she'd go there into its shade to rest. The whole world had shimmered with the heat, and the perfume of the flowers was immeasurably, sweetly cloying, the fragrance rivaled only by that of the dust. It went to Silna's head and dizzied her, but more pleasantly than any drink would, even with how dry the air was in her throat.

Silna had pulled Sophia into the shadow of the bear and Sophia had pushed her the rest of the way, pressing Silna back into the cool prickle of the bush as her hand had met Silna's cheek. They'd been friends by then. Silna had loved her, by then, and she smiled at Sophia to show it.

“Is this... permitted, where you're from? Are women allowed to love each other like this?” Sophia had asked, with such fragile, yearning hope in her voice. Even then, Sophia had not whispered. She knew what she wanted with too much a familiarity to allow any shame to stifle the question.

Silna nodded, overcome with her own delicate hope, a thing as green and tender as the youngest of spring seedlings, and she'd pulled Sophia in, putting her lips to Sophia's as she'd learned was the custom in romance, here in this place. Sophia had deepened the meeting of their mouths before Silna had, and had not flinched away at the stub which was all that was left of Silna's tongue. Silna's hat had bumped against the brim of Sophia's bonnet. Leaves in her hair and the chorus of birds and insects in her ears and a song in her heart.

She looks out the window at the autumn moon and finds herself wistful for the height of summer, when everything was new and wondrous and a little unreal to her. She is worried as to what this English winter will bring. Scared, she'll admit, of the memories which its wan reality may stir up, pale imitation of what she had known or no.

There is the rustle of Sophia getting out of bed, and then she is behind her, her body warm, the blanket she has wrapped around her shoulders now spreading to enfold them both. Cloth and goose down and a woman who loves her.

Sophia hooks her chin over Silna's shoulder and murmurs, “Stay up as long as you need. I'll just keep you company, if that's all right.”

Silna sighs as she relaxes back against Sophia. With the reflection of their embrace suspended before her in the window, she rubs her cheek against Sophia's, a downy, nuzzling slide of sleep-hot skin, the full curve of her cheekbone fitting in against the faint dip below Sophia's. Telling her that all is now well.

 

 


End file.
